On December 25, 2024, the 13th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress voted to adopt the Value Added Tax Law of the People's Republic of China. As a turnover tax, value-added tax is directly related to the trading activities of market entities and is also a tax type that taxpayers are prone to tax risks due to improper handling in tax treatment. Here, we interpret the key provisions of the Value Added Tax Law through commentary to help readers understand the law.

The family is the cell of society and an important foundation for social harmony. In recent years, the increasing divorce rate and high housing prices have combined to make the issue of property division in divorce cases, especially the issue of parents providing financial support for their children to buy houses after marriage, increasingly complex. The legal application of these cases has a significant impact on people's marriage and housing behavior. From the interpretation of the Marriage Law (II) and (III) to the interpretation of the Civil Code and the Marriage and Family Code (I), the legal application of this issue has been fluctuating, which has caused parents to be extremely conflicted when providing financial support for their children to purchase a house after marriage.

On the evening of January 5, 2025, a netizen claiming to be Jia Jia, the girlfriend of Wang Xing (actor), posted on Weibo that Wang Xing went missing at the Thai Myanmar border around noon Beijing time on January 3 after joining a filming group in Thailand. Afterwards, the Chinese Embassy in Thailand and Consulate General in Chiang Mai urgently activated emergency plans and contacted relevant agencies such as the Thai police and immigration bureau. The Thai police immediately established a special task force to conduct a comprehensive investigation and cooperated with the Myanmar police and relevant law enforcement departments to search and rescue. On January 7th, the Chinese Embassy in Thailand released the latest update on the Wang Xing incident, confirming that he was successfully rescued on the afternoon of the 7th local time. This incident has sparked widespread attention and discussion.

On January 3, 2025, as the landing documents of laws and regulations such as the Personal Information Protection Law, the Regulations on the Administration of Network Data Security, the National Internet Information Office (hereinafter referred to as "the Office") issued the Measures for the Protection and Certification of Personal Information Going Abroad for Personal Information (Draft for Comments) (hereinafter referred to as "the Draft for Comments") to solicit public opinions. The deadline for feedback is February 3, 2025. The release of the draft for soliciting opinions has fired the first shot of legislation in the field of data protection in 2025, and is also another important measure in the field of personal information protection in China. It is of great significance for regulating the cross-border flow of personal information and ensuring personal information security. If officially approved, it may become the optimal solution for overseas processors to process domestic personal information and legally export data within the jurisdiction of the Personal Security Law. The draft for soliciting opinions consists of 20 articles, which clarify the scope, conditions, and main contents of personal information protection certification, aiming to implement Article 38 (1) (2) of the Personal Information Protection Law, which stipulates that personal information can be exported through personal information protection certification. This article will provide a quick evaluation and analysis of the issues that personal information export enterprises need to pay attention to in the draft for soliciting opinions, and provide suggestions for enterprises on how to carry out the next steps of work.

Is it useful for defense lawyers to submit expert opinions in criminal cases? This has always been a controversial topic. Last year, Dong Mingzhu invited five well-known legal scholars to Zhuhai to discuss a case, which once again pushed the expert opinions to the forefront. I have also seen many expert opinions when I was a prosecutor. I have also organized several expert discussions in the cases I participated in after resigning, and invited well-known experts, so I would like to share my own views.

The issue of exceeding the construction period during the construction process is quite common for contractors, and the resulting disputes such as exceeding the construction period are unavoidable issues for both parties. Among them, the determination of the overdue use fee for "scaffolding" (including the internal support formwork of the tall formwork support system) in professional subcontracting contracts has caused many controversies and differences. In judicial practice, courts in various regions also have different opinions on the nature of the overdue use fee for "scaffolding". If the overdue use fee of the "scaffold" is a settlement clause, it is difficult for the people's court to exercise its discretion to adjust it; If the overdue fees belong to the breach of contract clause, the court may exercise its discretion to adjust them in the event that the defendant argues that the liquidated damages agreed upon are too high. At the same time, in practice, there are often a large number of subcontracting contracts for the "scaffolding" profession where the contractor does not have the corresponding professional subcontracting qualifications, resulting in the invalidity of the signed "Construction Engineering Professional Subcontracting Contract". If the overdue fees are deemed to belong to the penalty clause, the penalty clause cannot be applied on the premise that the contract is invalid. Therefore, in judicial practice, it is particularly important for courts to understand and judge overdue fees.

According to Article 2 of the Occupational Disease Prevention and Control Law of the People's Republic of China (2018 Amendment), occupational diseases refer to diseases caused by workers in enterprises, institutions, and individual economic organizations who come into contact with dust, radioactive substances, and other toxic and harmful factors during their occupational activities.

Many people have always had a misconception that the transfer of state-owned property rights between state-owned enterprises can be carried out free of charge, thinking that since they are all state-owned enterprises, mutual transfer will not lead to the loss of state-owned assets. However, this is not the case in reality. The gratuitous transfer of state-owned property rights of enterprises is carried out between specific state-owned entities, and is not applicable to all entities holding state-owned property rights.

Policy background: Housing reform is a product of China's urban housing system reform. It is a transitional policy for urban housing to transform from previous unit allocation to a market economy. It refers to the purchase of existing public housing by urban residents at cost price or standard price in accordance with relevant national policies on urban housing system reform.